Permafrost
by PallaPlease
Summary: An odd little vignette written from Permafrost/Maureen Conner's POV.  [Complete]


Permafrost  
  
*  
  
Reverend Addison said I should write down my thoughts; he says I can get my emotions out to preserve them forever. I think it's because I can write better than I can speak, so that's why I'm supposed to write them down instead of telling them to Mrs. Robinson at the foster home. She says she understands, but she doesn't.  
  
I miss Mommy. I was three when she came home from the hospital, and the doctor told me she was really sick and that she wasn't supposed to walk a lot or get overly emotional, or something like that. I can't really remember. She married Tom a little while later, and then it wasn't special for me anymore. See, Mommy told me that I was her pretty little nurse and that I was the most important person in the whole world to her. Tom never liked me. When he came over when he was dating Mommy, he said he thought I was charming and a lovely little doll. Then she went and got married to him, and we learned that he was a bad, bad man. He hit me and called me bad things (Mommy told me to never, ever repeat them, so I won't write them down), and he smelled funny almost all the time because of the beer he always drank. Mommy was too scared to tell anybody, partly because he said he'd kill me if she did and partly because he was the only one who could work. We still had to go to soup kitchens and Salvation Army a lot. But even if Mommy wasn't strong enough to make sure he didn't hit me, she would warn me when he was drunk, so I would go to the bathroom and lock the door and hide in the bathtub. One time, though, Mommy was at the hospital because she'd started breathing funny and the ambulance came to take her to the doctors, and Tom made me drink one of his beers; he said it was good for me. I got really sick and I threw up all over the carpet, and he got really mad. It hurt to move for an entire week after that. I was still three.  
  
Then it was Christmas Eve, about four years later, and Mommy gave me, for the first time, the expensive crystal angel my real daddy (I wish I knew what he looked like) gave her before he died. I was supposed to put it on our Christmas tree, and I would have, but Tom came in. Mommy died.  
  
And it's ALL TOM'S FAULT!! Damn him, the stupid bastard! DAMN HIM!!!  
  
…  
  
I'm sorry. I learned those words from Tom, and I wasn't supposed to repeat those words either. I'm sorry, Mommy.  
  
Nobody understood me after that. Not the social workers, not Tom who wouldn't let me come back to the house (I didn't want too, anyway), and not even the other homeless people at the abandoned cable place.  
  
But Static understood.  
  
He told me he lost his mommy, too. He knows what it's like to be lonely, how it feels. "How the pain never really goes away." He understood, he comforted me, he…  
  
He held me.  
  
Sometimes, at night, when I can't sleep and all I can do is sit on my bed and stare out the window at the silver moon, or make little snow gardens on my dresser, I close my eyes and remember how it felt. It was the first time in so many years that I'd been held without my being scared. He was so warm, so different from what I'd become (ice, cold, frost…), and I could hear his heart beating rhythmically, constantly, wonderfully. The only sound I could hear, and his arms – so very warm – wrapped around my back. Held with my arms around his neck, and my cheek cradled in the soft dip between his neck and his chest. Softly held. So softly…  
  
I've never felt like that before.  
  
Every couple of weeks, he comes by the foster home to check up on me.  
  
"Maureen," he always says, and he smiles. "What's up?" We talk for a while, and then he has to go. Every visit, just before Mrs. Robinson makes him leave (she thinks I shouldn't spend so much time with a boy), I ask him to tell me who he really is. "Ask me again," he tells me, every time: "the next time I come over." So I do.  
  
I think…  
  
I think I might…  
  
Never mind.  
  
  
  
  
  
*  
  
Author's Notes: Original title, ne? [Permafrost being Maureen Conner's 'bang baby' nickname.] I couldn't think of anything else, though, so it'll just be like that until I possibly think of a better title.  
  
Anyway, I've never been overly fond of Daisy – after all, I was one of a very few Freida/Virgil fans – and, when I saw this episode, I got a little niggle in the back of my head saying that it sort of looked like Permafrost/Maureen liked Static. So…wa-la. ;] Amazing, isn't it?  
  
[Reviews. They're like slices of heaven sent down to serenade me. Well, not really, but pretty darn close. So, review?] 


End file.
